NUREMBERG, Germany—System design complexity requires new solutions not only to conquer that complexity but keep the pace of design robust. No longer do engineering teams toss hardware or software over the wall and wipe their hands. Software must be considered early in the design flow but solutions here vary. “SoC developers want to use software to verify system-level use cases and reuse these tests in simulation, emulation, FPGA prototype, and even on post-silicon platforms, ” says Markus Winterholer, Product Engineer for Embedded Software Solutions with Cadence. Winterholer was at Embedded World 2015 here demonstrating two sets of technologies that seek to meet this challenge. Perspec System Verifier , announced in December 2014, for automated generation of system-level use cases that can run across all platforms for SoC verification, and an embedded software debugging platform to improve the time to find and fix system-level issues uncovered by these software-driven use cases. With respect to Perspec, engineers capture an abstract model of system actions and resources to enable fast creation of abstract use cases and describe the constraints of the system. “Perspec has a formal solver and will automatically generate solutions that meet the goals of the abstract use case and display it in an easy-to-understand-and-debug UML activity diagram,” he said in an interview. “Then the tool can generate C code from that scenario, which is compiled and run on the embedded device regardless of whether using simulation, emulation, or post-silicon”, he added. “For debug of software and software-driven verification tests, there are a variety of industry solutions, but none tied elegantly into simulation or emulation environments”, Winterholer said. “So we as a platform vendor are supporting embedded software to fill the gap from high-level model to FPGA prototype or the silicon while you’re early in the stages of RTL design and you still want to debug the software,” he said. Here’s our Embedded World conversation and Winterholer’s demonstration of the embedded software debug technology: (Please visit the site to view this video) Brian Fuller Related Stories - Embedded World 2015: Enabling Automotive System Design with Allegro Sigrity Tools - Embedded World 2015: Press Briefing on Stratus High-Level Synthesis Platform - Embedded World 2015: The Next Generation of Engineers![]()
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